Three Photographs: Oak Island, North Carolina

Nostalgia and the Mamiya RZ67

On a recent wet and blustery October day I was traveling between my parents’ home in South Carolina and my home in Raleigh. I decided to take a quick trip over to Oak Island for some photography.

Between calls that I was taking and making while driving, I would have about an hour out on the beach with my camera. I had in mind just a few photos: a lighthouse, the beach, and the water.

Oak Island sits near the southeast corner of North Carolina. It is a place of many memories for me. My grandmother had a house there. We would go to it in the summers through my youth and college years. The island reminds me of her love for fishing in the surf and my sun drenched days in the 1970’s and 1980’s when, it seemed, sunscreen was not a thing. The sunburned skin would be peel off my back and chest in sheets. On thinking about it, perhaps that is why spending time on a sunny beach is generally not something I have wanted to do as an adult.

Fort Caswell is on the east end of the island. It guarded the entrance to the Cape Fear River for many decades in the 19th and 20th century. The fort and its supporting infrastructure are mostly ruins now. It all was sold as surplus to the NC Baptist Convention decades ago. It’s now used as a retreat. Dormitories and other buildings have been built on the land to support that purpose.

I had brought along the Mamiya RZ67 and two lenses for it, the 50mm and 250mm. I have shot quite a bit with the 50mm but really wanted to give the 250mm some time on the camera.

The Mamiya RZ67 is a camera I have become enamored with. In the short time I have had it I’ve bought and traded for a nice set of lenses and backs to compliment the body. The 6x7 negative it can produce is stunning. The camera body is a nice mix of modern and retro. The lenses are stellar. Although I do have a metered finder for it, I like to use the waist level finder and an external meter. These cameras, for what they can do, are bargains at current prices.

Are they big and heavy? Sure. These Mamiyas were top end cameras designed for studio use just before digital came along and rocked the photography world. With that said, I have traveled by plane with the RZ and lenses as carry on luggage. I’ve hiked with it. Maybe that’s not to everyone tastes but that’s okay.

Near Fort Caswell is the Oak Island Lighthouse. It was built in the 1950’s to help keep the ships off the very dangerous Frying Pan Shoals and guide them into the mouth of Cape Fear. The shoals were formed as the Cape Fear River deposited part of what is now North Carolina into the Atlantic over eons. The shoals extend about twenty-eight miles out into the ocean.

The beach near Fort Caswell was deserted. As I was standing there with my camera on the tripod thinking about compositions, I noticed an old gentleman in his raincoat. He was walking with purpose.

I imagined he had walked this way many times as part of a daily routine, and the weather was not going to stand in the way of his habit.

This was framed very quickly and I saw it as a panoramic. A really great thing about 6x7 is that if you crop the center edge to edge you can get the same aspect ratio as the Xpan format.

The 250mm in 6x7 is similar to a 125mm in 35mm format. So it’s a moderate telephoto. I notice it does compress a little but not in the same way that it would be in 35mm. I really am proud of this photo. I like the diagonal of the dark sand and light surf leading the eye to the lone man. The rain was getting heavier so the horizon became very indistinct.

From the same spot I turned my camera towards the North Atlantic and the shoals. Leveled for the horizon and adjusted exposure. I stood with my umbrella for a while to see what the weather would do. It cleared some.

Finally, walking back to my truck, I set up to take a photo of the lighthouse. The problem is that there homes near it so I used the dunes to obscure them and isolate the lighthouse. This shot makes the lighthouse appear mush shorter than it it. The photograph shows only about two-thirds of it.

Which film, you might ask? I might write about that in the next newsletter in a different context.

Goodby for now, and thanks for reading my first newsletter.